


Drove Through Ghosts to Get Here

by luckybarton



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, BAMF Peggy Carter, Background Melinda May - Freeform, Crossing Timelines, Crossover, Developing Friendships, Fanboy Phil Coulson, Gen, Mentors, Post-Mindhunter (TV 2017), Pre-Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Pre-Avengers (2012), Rookie Phil Coulson, Timeline Shenanigans, in which Holden has learned from his mistakes, the dates work! I did the math
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-03-09 00:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13470351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckybarton/pseuds/luckybarton
Summary: It's been years since Bill and Holden started the Behavioral Science Unit, and forensic psychology has finally started to gain some traction in the law enforcement community at large. Peggy Carter, Director of SHIELD, invites Special Agent Holden Ford to work with them on a case that has been giving them nothing but dead ends. Along the way, he meets Phil Coulson—a junior agent who reminds him all too well of himself.This fic happens after Mindhunter and significantly before Agents of SHIELD. If you follow one fandom but not the other, you should be alright, though be aware that here be Mindhunter spoilers.





	1. Triskelion

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by [Acts_of_Tekla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acts_of_Tekla/pseuds/Acts_of_Tekla). She's awesome.

**_Theodore Roosevelt Island_ **

**_Washington D.C._ **

 

Holden wasn’t sure what bothered him more—that a briefcase in the passenger seat foothold held the entire contents of his former desk, or that this was all he’d managed to gather in his time at the FBI. There was a bittersweet feeling to it all, not unlike when Bill had retired. Maybe that was it—leaving Quantico behind for the first time in almost eight years. Not that he’d had much to hold onto. He—and Bill—and Wendy, who was the head of the division now, because they _were_ a division now, as difficult as it still was to believe—had trained their replacements, signed off on them. They were good. They’d pull the bureau into the future.

Holden vaguely recalled hearing about the Triskelion’s construction, but only from Bill’s comment about how they were _finally doing something with that island in the Potomac._ He hadn’t known that it would span across the entire island. The monumental building which loomed before him was already _in_ the future.

He supposed the new FBI agents had a lot of pulling to do.

The first checkpoint waved him through when he showed his FBI badge. On the other end of the bridge, he was stopped.

“Special Agent Ford, I’m with the bureau,” he said, showing the lady at the checkpoint his badge. She squinted at him through the window. Bulletproof glass, he recognized.

“Clearance code?” she asked, in clipped tones.

“I don’t have one,” Holden said. “But I have a meeting with Director Carter to get to. Is there anything you can do?”

The woman, unimpressed, looked Holden in the eye. He stared back. “If you want to get in, Agent Ford, you’re going to have to go through security. Turn right after the gate.” 

The barrier lifted. Holden turned right, pulled up where he was directed to within the underground parking lot, and swiftly came face to face with a SHIELD agent who escorted him to a small, white room with a table and severely uncomfortable chairs. Moments later, two others entered.

Security had a negligible sense of humour, but that was okay. Holden had experience with their sort of people. Unfortunately, they had experience with _his_ sort of people, and Holden was far more comfortable being on the other side of this kind of interview.

“Was that the phone?” one of the interviewers said, abruptly.

“I got it,” said the other, heading into an adjacent room and picking the phone off its hook. After what looked like a terse exchange, he hung up, then returned to the holding room.

“Director Carter has confirmed that she’s expecting you,” he said, “tomorrow. That’s why you weren’t in our register.”

“Oh,” Holden replied. “There must have been a clerical error. Will I still be able to speak to her?”

“Yes,” the security officer replied, “tomorrow. I’m afraid you’ll have to come back.”

“I think I have the initial correspondence in my briefcase,” Holden said, “and it said today. January the eighth, nineteen eighty-five.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that—” the interviewer began, before being cut off by a voice at the door.

“The fact that what?” A woman was standing in the doorway now. She was greying, Holden noted. Older than any of the people he’d met here so far. “I’m here to meet our new specialist. Please, can you stop holding him up?”

“Are you the Director—?” Holden asked as they made their way out of the cramped corner of the building that was Security, through an atrium, and into a glass-walled elevator.

“Call me Peggy,” she said. She punched in a floor number—something ridiculous—and the elevator began to rise, the view of the Potomac becoming more and more distant as they went up. “I’m sorry about the hassle, I really am.”

“Peggy.” Holden repeated. The doors slid open, and they stepped out onto a floor that, despite being so high up, reminded Holden of the basement that the Behavioral Science Unit had started out in—if it had natural lighting, more floor space, and significantly more people, several of whom looked up from their work to watch them enter. Peggy cleared her throat.

“Agents, this is Special Agent Ford. He’s on loan from the FBI. He’ll be working with us, so I want you to treat him like one of us. Are we clear?”

The resulting “yes, ma’am” echoed throughout the floor.

“Military,” Holden muttered, once they were round a corner and out of earshot of the office. Peggy laughed. “It’s in SHIELD’s blood,” she said. “The FBI came out of the police needing to chase people across states. SHIELD—it came from the Strategic Scientific Reserve needing to exist after the second World War.”

“I know the history,” Holden said.

“Maybe not all of it,” Peggy replied. “But I’ll be clear. You have clearance to know about all the documentation relating to the case we’ve pulled you for. Not everybody else does. _Not even everyone on this floor,”_ she added.

“I’d heard stories,” Holden replied, “about this agency, and its layers and layers of secrecy, but I thought it was all rumour.”

“I’d heard stories about the FBI, but until I had to interact with it, I thought they were rumours too,” Peggy replied. “Anyway, all I need to know from you before I let you into the room we’re about to go into is that you agree that everything will remain confidential.”

“Don’t you need that on paper?” Holden asked.

“No,” Peggy replied, “I have it on audio. Do you?”

“ _Audio_. I mean, yeah.” Holden said, trying to work out if their present location was covered by wiretap laws. Probably not. “Let’s see it.”

“Great,” Peggy said, “because this is going to be your office.”

“Wait, what about the induction?” Holden asked, momentarily confused.

“It’ll happen tomorrow,” Peggy replied. “Right now, you need to see what you’re going to be working on, and I have a board meeting to get to.”

“So you’re leaving me alone with this?” Holden asked, mildly incredulous. All this about security, and then...

“Consider it a trust exercise,” Peggy responded. “Besides, they’re all xeroxes,” she added, unlocking the door with a swipe of her palm across a panel beside it. Holden stared for a second, then followed her in.

“Was this someone else’s office before?” he asked, seeing the marks of use on the filing cabinet and what he could swear were scorch marks in the left corner of the room.

“Howard Stark’s, before we repurposed the floor.”

“Howard Stark,” Holden repeated, “I’m in Howard Stark’s old office.”

“Yes, you are. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I _really_ need to get to that meeting,” Peggy said, exiting the room and closing the door behind her. Holden wondered how he was going to get back in if he had to leave. He wondered if he _could_ leave. A quick test of the doorknob confirmed that he was not, in fact, trapped. He wondered if there was a little camera in here, watching him. If they had that palm scanner, who knows what else SHIELD could have up their sleeve.

Or, he supposed, what information they might have gathered about him that would make him worthy of their trust.

Holden opened a drawer of the filing cabinet and drowned the thought in photocopies.


	2. Overhand

As far as Holden was concerned, the data SHIELD had given him didn’t even make sense. The case  _ overview  _ was an inch thick, so Holden had leafed through it, ascertained that it came to no useful conclusions, and moved on to the cover pages of the documents covering the related cases. They dated back from the fifties—with gaps of months to years between each individual case—all the way through to last August. Holden picked up the most recent document to glance over.

It was the assassination of Geraldine Ferraro, running mate to Walter Mondale. Her death, combined with the previous controversy surrounding her finances, had marked the end of Mondale’s campaign in all but an official statement. The FBI had considered it a closed case from the get-go—nobody had seen the shooter, nobody was ever caught—and yet, here SHIELD was, withholding evidence that could have caught the killer.

Wendy, had she been in the room, would have been furious. Holden just stared at it for a minute, stunned. Finally, he set the paper aside, below the folder and to the left.

The start of the ‘politicians’ category.

Not all of the victims were involved with politics. Some were business magnates, or their family members. Sometimes they were just ordinary people, seemingly selected at random, the noise in the signal. One of them had been alive when the police found her. She had spent her last few days hooked up to machines in a hospital, before an infection set in and septicemia claimed her. Her descriptions of her attacker were, frankly, impossible, but they lined up with the few other eyewitness reports and the blurry photographs paperclipped to them.

Holden added another document to the ‘unknown motive’ stack and glanced for the date of the next one. It wasn’t there—the cover page had a meaningless codename for a title, and its clearance level was clearly marked, along with a corresponding warning. He flipped it open, and almost fell out of his chair.

Holden remembered where he was the day that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. He wasn’t sure there was anyone who’d been alive at the time that didn’t, at least counting Americans. He’d been in a lecture at the FBI academy—learning, not teaching, not at that point—when they’d suddenly stopped, another of their lecturers running in and delivering the bad news. For the next few days, nobody at the Academy knew what was going on, and yet everyone did, the rumours circulating and proliferating until they’d almost become the truth.

Everyone had also known that as soon as the FBI got their hands on the killer, they’d have some real answers. Nobody had expected Lee Harvey Oswald to be shot. So here he was, with the file of a dead man who’d gone on to kill others for years on after. His hands shook as he looked further through. A lot of things were said in the first few paragraphs, but Holden only picked up on one.

The fact that Lee Harvey Oswald hadn’t done it. Was innocent, at least of this particular crime. And that SHIELD had known. Known almost since the deed was done.

Known, judging by the date, before the Warren Commission had even  _ started their investigation. _

The urge to throw something was quelled by the need to remain composed. Holden dropped the paper onto the table, waited a moment, then began to read the full document. It had been appended to since it had first been created, later additions detailing other agencies’ investigations into the assassination and their findings—along with a summary of which information appeared to be legitimate, what had been determined to be false, and what evidence had been fabricated, either by SHIELD or other actors.

Not that anyone had been able to find much out, anyway. Oswald’s death had proven more of a diversion than Oswald himself, and his Soviet background had made him interesting to the public. Everything SHIELD needed to cover up their cover-up had fallen into place perfectly.

Holden didn’t touch the rest of the papers. He needed to take a walk. Leaving his briefcase and files behind, he turned the doorknob and stepped back out into the corridor that attached to the office. The door clicked behind him, and Holden came to the sinking realisation that he might not be able to get back in. 

He tried the doorknob, then the hand panel. The light above the panel blinked red. He decided not to go on the walk.

Holden only had to wait about ten minutes before Peggy returned, laughed at him, and let him back into the room. “We’ll get your palmprint added to the registry,” she said. “What did you get through?”

“I got up to here,” Holden said, lifting the JFK paper from the desk. “Tell me. What am I supposed to take from this?”

“Did you read that report?”

“Yes,” Holden replied, “and before I go further, I need to know why I should trust the agency that covered up the  _ JFK assassination.” _

“We’re trusting you,” Peggy replied, leaving a pause that Holden wasn’t sure if he should read meaning into.

“I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that the man who killed JFK also killed Ferraro,” Holden replied.

“Walk me through what you learned while I was out,” Peggy said. “Tell me about your strategy.”

“I started with the top drawer of the filing cabinet and didn’t get any further,” Holden said. “I started from the front and worked my way down to the JFK document, which is where I stopped. The piles are to categorize the victims.”

“What did you think?” Peggy asked.

“The killer isn’t like the ones we see in the BSU,” Holden started, his words measured. “When he kills, he does it from a distance, with a gun. He doesn’t torture his victims, at least, most of the time. He doesn’t mutilate their corpses, or purposefully leave calling cards. He’s not in it for power.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“What?”

“Something new,” Peggy responded. “SHIELD has been chasing its tail over this for far too long to take on another ‘expert’ who can only rehash what we already know.”

“What do you know already?” Holden asked.

“Beside what we have in evidence, almost nothing tangible,” Peggy replied. “This many years on, with at least this many killings, and we still don’t have a suspect. Before Ferraro, we almost closed the case. Howard thought the murderer might have died himself.”

“Some of the reports had ballistics analyses attached,” Holden said. “In the earlier cases, he used Russian slugs in an American gun. How do you know he’s not a Soviet operative?”

“The killings don’t follow a pattern of what we know to be Soviet interests,” Peggy said. “There’s an analysis in the file cabinet, but I don’t recommend reading it unless you have, say, three hours to kill.”

“I’ll pass for now,” Holden replied. “Do you want anything else?”

“I want you to create notes on anything that stood out to you,” Peggy said, “and then I want you to go home, come back tomorrow, and come up with a list of theories you want to follow up on. We can discuss those afterward.”

“Who else is on this case?” Holden asked. “Actively.”

“For now? Just you.” Peggy said. “The agents who were working on it have been moved to other projects. You can speak to them if and when you need to.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Peggy replied. “If you need help finding the exit, the receptionist will show you the way.”

“Thanks,” Holden said, to an already-empty room. One at a time, he returned the documents to their folders, then the folders to the drawer, leaving the room exactly how it had been when he’d entered it. If he’d learned anything from working in a confined space, it was that mess piled up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somebody spotted that in Mindhunter, Holden and Bill actually founded the Behavioral Science Unit, and the Behavioral Analysis Unit was something else that came later. However, the media often refers to the BAU in the context of Mindhunter, as if the BSU and the BAU were the same. I've changed the name I use in this fic to the canonically (and historically) accurate name.


	3. Ricochet

When Holden returned to the Triskelion, he was waved through at the gate. He parked his car in the parking lot and entered, this time, through the main entrance—which was, thankfully, clearly marked. He made his way to the elevator, where he punched in the number of the floor that contained his office. The elevator dinged open, but he didn’t make it more than a few steps into the main office before he heard his name being called.

The guy holding him up was young, undecorated, and doing a terrible job of concealing his excitement. He was probably a new-ish recruit, but not too new—Holden doubted that someone fresh from whatever academy SHIELD had would be allowed on this floor if he were completely green, no matter what level of compartmentalization they’d put into place.

“Hi,” Holden said. He walked over to the guy and extended his hand. “Who are you?”

“Agent Phil Coulson,” the guy— _Phil_ —told him, and shook his hand. “I heard you needed to be added to some systems. I figured I’d catch you before you started work today.”

“I thought you guys would pull my handprint off a doorknob,” Holden said, “what with everything else SHIELD can do.”

Phil laughed. “We aren’t _that_ good.”

“Still miles ahead of the rest of us,” Holden replied. “What else do you guys have? DNA comparison?”

“I’ve only been out of training for a year or so. I haven’t had the chance to use much of SHIELD’s tech yet,” Phil replied.

“Let’s get this done with,” Holden said. “Can we do this at any panel?”

“It’s not quite that simple,” Phil said. “We’ll need to go down a few floors.”

 

‘Not quite that simple’ involved standing in a lab and dunking his hand in a dish of suspicious-looking goo. The technician gave what Holden was sure was a perfectly reasonable explanation of _why he had to be doing this,_ but he was still wary as he lowered his palm into the tray. When he removed it, there was goo still on his hand, but the impression his hand had left in the tray was perfect.

Holden washed it off as quickly as possible. He turned to the technician, who was sliding the goo into a device that looked like a science fiction toaster oven. "How long will it take to put this into the system?"

"A few hours," said Phil, who was not the technician but seemed to know things like that, anyway.

“Is there anything else I have to do?”

“There’re a few forms you need to fill in for onboarding purposes, and I can give you a tour,” Phil said. “If you want it,” he hastily added.

“Can we do the tour and then the forms?” Holden asked.

Phil shrugged. “Sounds fine. You’ve already got an office.” They set out the way they came, going back into the elevator. “This floor is all labs. There’s not much more to see, and, honestly, the people in them hate to be walked in on.”

“So I shouldn’t come down here, then,” Holden said.

“No, the point is that you should set an appointment. Let them know when to expect you. Like with Steiner over there—part of the reason I had to grab you so quickly is that this is when I had arranged to meet with him.”

“Steiner,” Holden said. “Is that the technician’s name?”

“It’s his surname. We’re both Phil, so it gets confusing.”

“Okay,” Holden said, mentally filing the information, “so...do you go by Phil?”

“People call me Coulson, but if you don’t want to, it’s okay,” he replied, “Special Agent Ford.”

“Holden. Uh, just call me Holden,” Holden added, taking the opportunity to get Phil— _Coulson_ —to use his first name for once since he’d started yammering.

“Really?” Coulson replied. He seemed unsure of whether he should be taking the offer seriously, or disregarding it as a gesture he wasn’t meant to follow through on.

“Yes, really,” Holden said, and he could swear that he could see the kid’s eyes light up. “You don’t need to use my title every time you address me.”

“Alright. Holden.” Coulson stated as the elevator completed its descent. They stepped through the glass doors and into a large, open space.

Holden recognized the atrium—he’d walked through it yesterday with Peggy, and earlier that morning to get to his office. “Wonder how much concrete went into this,” he said, casting his eyes over the windowed walls and the stylized statue of the SHIELD logo that stood to the far left. Coulson watched him look.

“I don’t know why they don’t just change the logo to the one in the statue,” Coulson said, “it’s so much better.”

“Maybe you should bring it up with the Director,” Holden said.

Coulson shook his head. “You can’t just _bring something up with Director Carter.”_

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to be the director one day, then,” Holden told him, “and then you can change it. And maybe get some color here that’s not black or grey.”

“I don’t think that’s ever happening,” Coulson shot back. “Besides, what do the FBI have over us? Blue suits?”

“Just because I’m wearing blue today doesn’t mean I’m trying to represent the Agency. I didn’t realize that it would stand out so much here,” Holden joked. “So, this room. Does it have a name?”

“It’s just the Atrium,” Coulson said. “Creative, I know. But you can get anywhere else from here.”

“And where would I want to get to?” Holden asked.

“The canteen, maybe,” Coulson said, “or the hangar. Though I don’t think you need to go to the hangar.”

“No, we don’t,” Holden agreed. “But can we?”

 

Coulson knew the right things to say to the people at the various checkpoints that lay before the hangar entrance, and Holden knew how to play along. Finally, they passed through a pair of double doors and into the hangar itself.

The hangar was bigger than any room Holden had ever been in, including the one they had just left. It was also freezing, though he managed not to start shivering. There were three planes lined up inside of it, with space for a fourth. One of them was a conventional-looking airliner, but he didn’t have a chance at recognizing the other ones. They were all-black, a design that he was sure would only be stealthy if you were flying in the black of night. He said as much to Coulson, who shrugged and said that he knew they left at all times of day, so that can’t have been a priority.

“Now we need to move,” Coulson muttered.

“What?” Holden hissed back. Before Holden could really affirm or object, Coulson was walking and he was walking with him.

“If you stand there gaping like that, we’ll look suspicious.”

“I wasn’t _gaping.”_

They walked around to the side of one of the planes, and Coulson struck up a conversation with a man who Holden assumed immediately and confirmed less than two minutes later was an aircraft mechanic. Coulson started throwing in jargon, the mechanic reciprocated, and it ended with both of them laughing and Holden not having a clue as to what was going on.

“And now we leave,” Coulson said, after they were out of earshot of the mechanic. Holden let Coulson handle the people on the way out, too, nodding when it was required.

Back in the Atrium, he glanced at Coulson. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Whatever you said to the mechanic.” There was more he wanted to know, but he’d start with that. There’d probably be a straight answer.

“I used to work on a car. With my father,” Coulson said. “I learned the talk then, and I took shop class in high school.”

“I mean... talking to that guy like you knew him, when you obviously didn’t. Or did you?”

“I didn’t know him,” Phil said, “but I know guys like him. After I saw how he reacted to what I said first, I knew what to say afterwards.”

“The shop talk,” Holden replied. “You needed a rapport, so you used his language.”

“Yeah,” Coulson agreed, “that’s what I was saying. Want to see the canteen?”

“You can just tell me where it is,” Holden said. “I need to prepare for a meeting.”


	4. Two Seventy

When Holden touched his palm to the panel beside his office door, it unlocked with a click. His palmprint had to have been added to the system more quickly than Coulson had expected it to, he realized. The room was as he’d left it the last evening: immaculate, like nobody really worked there. He felt slightly sacreligious, making changes to the office that had been Howard Stark’s, but it had to be done. He slid open the drawer containing the cases he’d been over yesterday, pulled out the folders, and started to go over the headings of the documents.

After he had read the remaining documents and recreated the categories from the previous day, he wrote the names of the victims on index cards and pinned them to the previously empty corkboard on the wall by the door. JFK and Ferraro went up first, then the other politicians, then the businessmen, then the rest of them—the people who had no connection to power, people who’d taken a bullet to the chest while picking up eggs from the grocery.

All except two of the victims had been pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital or at the scene of the crime when the police arrived. The killer had never attempted to hide the bodies. Half of the murders had even been in broad daylight, with several direct witnesses. Despite this, sightings of the murderer were relatively rare, though the few descriptions corroborated each other. He wasn’t concerned with being seen only because he felt assured that he wouldn’t be.

If the shooter were a war veteran, the level of skill he displayed would just barely be plausible.

 

“I still think he’s an assassin,” he said to Peggy when she arrived a few hours later. “Soviet or not, you can’t reach that level of accuracy without training. This isn’t a disgruntled game hunter we’re looking at.”

“Do you have anything else?” she replied, not giving any cues as to what she wanted.

“Military, or ex-military. Doesn’t leave calling cards. He sometimes uses Russian bullets, sometimes American, sometimes others. Kills in broad daylight like he’s sure he won’t be seen—and he isn’t,” Holden said, then paused. “And he swaps out his gun like it’s his boxers.”

Peggy closed her eyes, then reopened them a moment later. _“Never_ use that analogy again.”

“Understood,” Holden replied. “Anyway, if he isn’t a professional assassin, then he has to have been in some military. Maybe a branch of the American one, maybe a foreign one, though the fact that all of these killings took place in America suggests that he’s American himself. World War Two ended, he stayed angry, never stopped fighting. Maybe he enjoyed war.”

“There’s a term for that. We call them winter soldiers,” Peggy said, “and it’s happened a few times before, in other circumstances. But never anything so prolonged as this. It’s usually because they never heard that the war hadn’t ended, or because they refused to believe the war wasn’t over. This can’t be that.”

“This isn’t like any other killer you’ve seen, though,” Holden replied. “There’s nothing remotely similar that isn’t already part of the evidence. The closest you can get is _the UNABOM case.”_

“And there, already, is a comparison we didn’t have before,” Peggy replied.

“The Unabomber is the FBI’s own Winter Soldier,” Holden replied. “I’m not on the case, but I know guys who are, and it just goes in circles.”

“You’re here to break that cycle,” Peggy said. “There’s further data you haven’t seen yet, and if you can give us anything we don’t know already from the information we already have, it’s worth it.”

“The sheer quantity of data is too much for one person,” Holden told her. “I need an assistant.”

“It may be difficult to find someone with the appropriate clearance level.”

“Forget clearance level,” Holden said. “I want Phil Coulson.”

 

“You have no _idea_ what they had me sign to get on this project,” Coulson said, now in Holden’s office, glancing between him and the names on the corkboard.

“They had me sign them too,” Holden replied.

Coulson shrugged. “If my life didn’t already belong to SHIELD, it does now. I think that was in the fine print, somewhere.”

“Maybe they’ll try harder to resuscitate you.”

“Considering what I was told about the trouble I could get myself and SHIELD into, probably,” Coulson replied. “You know who gave me that lecture? The _Director._ _I_ don’t even know why she wants me on this so much.”

“Didn’t you ask her?”

Coulson shifted. “No.”

“I’m not sure, either,” Holden told him.

Coulson looked back at the corkboard. “Does that really say JFK?”

“You might want to sit down for this,” Holden replied, and began to step through the most high-profile cases. “And then, next to all of these guys,” he motioned to the right side of the board, “we have them. They’re just...people.”

“So he kills JFK, and then, two months later, an office worker named Mark Paredes. And then a few business giants. And then a _dog walker.”_

“It doesn’t add up,” Holden agreed. “But that’s why I was brought on to the case. Why _we_ were,” he amended. “SHIELD has been chasing its tail over this for decades. They want this case to close.”

“What do we have to work with?”

“Everything they have.”

“SHIELD likes to compartmentalize,” Coulson said. “I see more than others, because I handle so much of the paperwork that comes through this floor. But it’s unusual to have everything, even on one case.”

“Maybe that’s their problem,” Holden said, now further into the realm of thinking aloud than conversing. “They don’t have anyone who knows the whole story, so they’ve been coming up with theories piecemeal. They can’t make the right connections because they’ve got, what, one guy on JFK and Ferraro and one guy on Paredes and the dog sitter. And then, when they finally get them together to talk, their theories don’t mesh and they can’t use any of it.”

Coulson nodded. “So we need to go through,” he gestured to the documents on the table, “all of this.”

“Phil,” Holden said, “we have an entire filing cabinet.”


	5. Carcharias

The second drawer of the filing cabinet contained the ballistics reports connected to the cases Holden had gone over—and for the most part, he left those to Coulson. When Holden would have to guess at the exact meaning of terms or struggle to match the equipment referenced to his fairly basic knowledge of weaponry, the SHIELD agent would seemingly instantly pick out the relevant pieces of information and note them down in a spiral-bound legal pad.

Instead, Holden focused his efforts on scrutinizing the backgrounds of the victims. They’d been provided with a mountain of supplementary evidence—mainly reports on the activities of businesses and groups the victims had been involved with. It felt almost voyeuristic, to pick through someone’s life in this level of detail. He wondered what SHIELD didn’t know, or—more importantly—what they couldn’t find out about a person.

Coulson, after being reassured that none of the documents were originals, had annotated the ballistics reports in a rainbow of colours. They looked more like someone’s middle grade homework than clinical descriptions of the ways a bullet had ricocheted off the inside of someone’s skull. Coulson’s index cards were also colour-coded, using a system he gladly described in detail to Holden—who continued to write his observations directly onto the cards using a black ballpoint pen.

Coulson looked up from his report and watched Holden try to find space for another point on the corkboard. He looked at the stacks of paper on the desk, read and unread. He looked back to Holden, who was trying to trace back a previously made connection through the spiderweb of string and thumbtacks they had created. “We’re gonna need a bigger board,” Coulson deadpanned.

“We’ve got at least twenty...no, twenty-five feet of paper,” Holden replied, putting on a bad Massachusetts accent. He glanced back to Coulson. “I don’t think that a bigger board is going to work,” he said, more seriously. “There’s just too much information to represent the connections like this.”

Coulson nodded. “You know, I saw the first showing of Jaws at the local cinema. Front-row. I was staring up the entire time.”

“It was the best film that year,” Holden said. “I thought I wouldn’t like it, so I was kind of dragged along. But it isn’t really about the shark.”

“I was 12,” Coulson said, “I think for me it was all about the shark. I didn’t want to swim for a _year.”_

 _“Jaws_ is about...it’s what people do when they’re scared,” Holden said. “They protect themselves, and the people they see as their own, at the expense of others.”

“Brody hates the water, but he goes out on the boat. Hooper hates Quint, but he works with him anyway,” Coulson replied. “They overcome that.”

“None of them actually care about killing the shark,” Holden said. “Quint wants money. Hooper wants to see a Great White, and Brody—he only really starts caring when he can’t keep his son out of danger.”

“It’s a fair point,” Coulson said. “But there were also people—in the water, when the shark appears—who helped each other escape.”

“There’s no pure motivation that would cause someone with full knowledge of how dangerous the shark was to go out on the water,” Holden said.

“This case,” Coulson started, “it’s our shark.”

Holden shook his head. “It isn’t mine. But then again, I’ve chased too many to count.”

A flash of guilt crossed Coulson’s face. “I saw you talk at Ann Arbor,” he said, as if it was an admission. “To the psych grad students.”

Holden stared for a second, not quite sure what to do with this complete non-sequitur. “Alright,” he said, finally. “I take it you weren’t a grad student yourself, though.” Unless he’d been some kind of child genius, the math wasn’t adding up.

Coulson shook his head. “I wasn’t even taking psychology,” he said. “I was in the History program. When I heard you were talking, I skipped class. I told the TA that I’d received permission from the most hardass professor in the faculty. He let me in.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Holden asked, at unease with the topic. He couldn’t tell where Coulson was going with this, or why the hell he looked so _guilty._ “If you wrote SHIELD’s profile on me, I’m not going to be offended.”

“I think I’m the reason you’re on this case,” he said, looking Holden in the eye. “In my normal job, I review and fill out a lot of paperwork. I picked up that SHIELD was looking for an outside specialist. Dropped your name in the right places. I wasn’t sure if they’d actually hire you.”

“Coulson, I know you didn’t put yourself on this team,” Holden said. Coulson nodded. “The entire reason I _asked_ to work with you—because I _did_ ask, and Director Carter wasn’t happy about it—was because of the kind of intelligence you displayed in the hangar,” Holden continued. “It’s not common to have that kind of instant rapport with so many different people. And I think you know that.”

“It’s what got me into SHIELD,” Coulson admitted. “In some ways, anyway.”

Holden folded his arms. “Is there a story?”

“I was taking this World War Two module, focusing heavily on the SSR,” Coulson said. “SHIELD’s precursor.”

“So you made an application,” Holden filled in.

Coulson shook his head. “SHIELD doesn’t...they don’t recruit in the same way other agencies do. They target individuals who already have skill sets they want. You don’t contact them, they contact you.”

Holden shrugged. “So you do this unit.”

“So I do this unit, and I do extra research afterwards, because this is stuff I didn’t hear about in high school. It didn’t make it onto the Manitowoc curriculum. And it’s exciting,” Coulson said. “And I decide I want to join SHIELD, so I can be a part of it. But,” he paused, “like I said, there’s no application process.”

Coulson continued on from there, describing the various ways he’d collected information about SHIELD and who he could possibly contact. “I knew that if I contacted someone too low down, they wouldn’t do anything—and if they were too high up, they wouldn’t waste their time on me,” he said, “so I found the direct number of the person who was actually in charge of personnel. And I gave them a phone call.”

“How did that go?” Holden asked, amused.

“So the next morning, I wake up, and my roommate wants to know why the men in black are at the door,” he said. “Because—I found this out later—SHIELD is just going, ‘who the hell is this guy and how the hell does he have our personnel officer’s number’. They can’t even work out how I knew who the guy was.”

“And then they _hired_ you?”

“I had to explain everything—my entire process. And give them my favourite notebook, with all of my research in it. I _never_ got that back. And then, after a week of radio silence, they showed up again and asked me if I still wanted to join.”

Holden rubbed his eyes. “I guess—putting things together from scraps is a skill set. And they have you on paperwork?”

Coulson shrugged. “I like paperwork,” he said, “and I’ve been on a field mission. It ended with fishing my partner out of the Sausalito bay,” he said, smiling. “She’d been waiting there for hours while I tried to suss out which waitress in a coffee shop was the sleeper agent.”

“That sounds...completely bizarre,” Holden said, “you know, if you can remember how you organized the notebook, we could do something similar. It’s the same level of complexity.”

“We could try,” Coulson said, “but let’s use a folder instead.”

“Alright, show me your method,” Holden agreed. “I’ll pay attention.”

Converting the mess on the corkboard into something that made sense using Coulson’s strategy—which involved lists, index numbers, and color coding, something Holden had found he couldn’t avoid—took the rest of the afternoon. It was unusual, but efficient. The corkboard was relegated to representing only high-level relationships, cutting out most of the details Holden had added and keeping track of them elsewhere.

Coulson obviously hadn’t been handed anything nearly as high-profile as this case, or he would have learned the same strategies as Holden by now—and Holden was glad for it. The next day, they were able to start on the records that hadn’t made it onto the board, and by the afternoon they had detailed several relevant patterns. However, none of them were particularly unique to the Winter Soldier, and while he thought they might serve as useful connections in the future, they didn’t really reveal much they didn’t already know on their own.

“I think I’ve got something,” Coulson said, cutting out of a conversational tangent about some 50s B-movie that they’d both managed to see by accident _._

“Tell me,” Holden said, setting aside the highlighter he’d been working with.

“So I was thinking,” Coulson began, “about how the key to the case wouldn’t be in the things that we gravitate to. The weapon-switching, the murders in broad daylight. They’re unusual, but we recognize them because we know what they look like because we’ve _seen them before._ So I was looking at the civilians, the piece of the puzzle that doesn’t make sense.”

“And you found...”

“Paredes—the office worker—was killed a few days before his company followed through on a controversial deal with the one Kathia, the guy shot in the Pizza Hut, owned,” Phil said. “And I thought that was weird. So I did some checking on a couple others. And then as many of the rest as I had the context for. It’s just the same story. Repeating itself.”

Holden stared ahead for a moment, mumbled something, and walked to the door. “I’m going to find Peggy,” he said, and left the office before Coulson could say anything more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second shoutout to [ Acts_of_Tekla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acts_of_Tekla/pseuds/Acts_of_Tekla), who is SUPER AWESOME and a great beta.


	6. Half Measures

Holden was able to locate Peggy quickly by applying the suitable amount of force and urgency. It was hardly even an act; in fact, he was sure that an attempt to remain entirely composed would result in his true feelings bleeding through. Instead, he kept careful control of the amount of anxiety he emoted to different people—in some cases, to increase his chances of getting useful information; in others, to avoid being stopped. He ran up eight flights of stairs to the boardroom—the stairwell had far lower levels of security than he’d anticipated—and stumbled into the floor’s entrance, feeling uncomfortably damp and holding his suit jacket in his left hand.

To his left was an unmarked door. To his right was a glass wall—and behind it, Peggy, talking to a white-haired man Holden didn’t immediately recognize. Peggy was facing away from the window, but the man noticed him, and briefly stared as if trying to recognize him before saying something to her. She turned around, made an expression Holden couldn’t quite decode, and pushed open the door of the soundproof chamber.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, clearly having more questions for Holden than just that.

Holden opened his mouth to answer before he really had one, blurting something just to stop Peggy from saying whatever she had been about to. “We found a pattern.”

Peggy tightened her lips. The man, who Holden now recognized as Howard Stark, looked confused. “Are you Agent Ford?” 

In all the times Holden had played through meeting Howard Stark in his head, it had never gone like this.

“Yes,” Peggy replied for him. “This is Holden Ford. From the project.”

Howard stepped forward, extending his hand. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

“I think that’s my line,” Holden said, ending the handshake and hoping his palm hadn’t been sweaty. He pulled the jacket back on. Now cold and clammy, its lining stuck uncomfortably to his back—a sensation he forcibly ignored.

“We’ll continue our meeting later,” Peggy said to Howard, then looked at Holden like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to question him or punch him. “What’s the pattern, and where’s the evidence?”

Holden glanced to the doorway he’d entered through. “Downstairs.”

“You know, you could have just had my secretary put you through. Or called directly once you knew the room number,” Peggy said.

“I didn't want to risk getting the run-around,” Holden lied, not having thought of phoning at all.

“It looks like you gave yourself the run-around,” Peggy replied drily. “You’re lucky the knockout gas in the stairs didn’t get you.”

“The knockout  _ what?” _

“Boxing gloves,” Howard said, “behind the ceiling panels.”

“You heard us,” Peggy said. “Who knows what might have happened if your card didn’t swipe at the exit?”

“Right,” Holden said, “what’s actually in there?”

“You saw Indiana Jones, right?” Howard said, smirking. “Actually, though, it’s need-to-know information—and you don’t need to take the stairs.”

“I get it,” Holden replied, “I’ll take the elevator.”

“No, you won’t,” Peggy said, “you’ll talk to my secretary.”

“So,” Howard began, as they entered the elevator, “you’re working with Phil Coulson?”

Holden glanced at him. “I am,” he said.

“I’ve heard about the guy but never met him,” Howard said. “Did he tell you how he was recruited?”

“No,” Holden lied, “he didn’t.”

“Normally, to join SHIELD, we have to find you,” Howard said. “We started doing that after we found that the people we wanted weren’t the same as the people who applied. We didn’t find Agent Coulson.”

The elevator stopped. A moment later, the doors slid open and they stepped out onto the floor that held Holden’s office.

“What do you mean?” asked Holden, voice low. He wasn’t sure if Coulson would still be where he’d left him.

“It means we’re paying attention,” Peggy said, “it’s not every day that we give a junior agent such a high-profile assignment—”

“—but nothing about this case is everyday,” Howard finished. He opened the door to the office using the palm scanner and pushed it open.

Holden was sure that Coulson thought he appeared composed, but he really, really didn’t. He looked at Howard like he wasn’t sure if he was really there and avoided looking at Peggy at all, even when addressing her. He quickly realized that if he wanted Coulson to say anything useful at all, he would almost have to relay any questions either Howard or Peggy asked of him. Eventually, Coulson stopped being quite as starstruck and Holden was able to step back, letting him explain the process and the pattern himself.

“Here’s the thing,” Holden said, after Coulson had finished, “we’re going to need the Soviet expert.”

Peggy looked at him strangely. “Soviet expert?”

“The one who wrote the analysis which said the Winter Soldier wasn’t a Soviet operative,” Holden said. “If he’s Soviet, we know slightly more about what we’re dealing with. If he isn’t—it’s worse. Some group we don’t know about, controlling that much?”

“What you’ve just told me makes his actions sound even less like the work of a Soviet operative.”

“But if the expert—”

“Agent Ford,” Peggy said, “I wrote the analysis. It remained unsigned only because up until we brought you on, only Stark and I had ever seen these documents. This case is the culmination of decades of work, and I assure you that we are  _ not _ looking for a Russian sniper—or we would have caught him.”

“So there were no teams before us,” Coulson mumbled.

“So you understand the gravity of the case,” Peggy replied, “and why I spoke to you  _ personally  _ about your involvement.” After a pause where no-one spoke, she continued, “I have a new file to give to you—it needs to be copied, but you can have it within the hour.”

“When you interrupted us, we were talking about whether the murder detailed in the file was committed by the Winter Soldier,” Howard said, and glanced over to Coulson. “After what you’ve told us, we want you on it as soon as possible.”

Once Peggy and Howard had left, Holden stood up. “Let’s take a walk.”

“A walk?” Coulson echoed. “We won’t be here when they come back.”

“It won’t take that long,” Holden said, and waited for Coulson to start following him before he pulled the door open to leave.


	7. Afterimage

Holden realized that he still hadn’t decided where to go as soon as they stepped into the elevator. “Canteen? I’m starving.”

“Sure,” Coulson said, “let’s go.”

The food in the canteen was at the bottom end of acceptable, but it wasn’t why Holden had brought Coulson here and he had the suspicion that Coulson knew that, too. “We need to talk,” he said, setting his fork down.

“Did I do something wrong?” Coulson asked. “When Stark came in, and Director Carter, I—”

“Not that,” Holden said, “don’t worry about that. You haven’t done anything wrong,” he added, watching Coulson’s face for cues. “But I’m worried that you’re going to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Coulson asked, looking increasingly similar to a scared rabbit.

Holden changed tactics. “Since you were recruited, have you ever been in trouble with SHIELD?”

“No,” Coulson replied.

“But you’ve broken rules,” Holden said. Coulson was silent. “And it’s not that you never get caught. It’s that you know how to talk your way out of it.”

“I like puzzles,” Coulson said, looking away, “people are like them.”

“Sure,” Holden said, “and that works. It’s obviously worked for you so far. But you’re going to meet people who think the same way you do, and they’re going to  _ recognize _ that you’re trying to play them.”

Coulson glanced back. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Holden said. “I asked for you because I saw that ability. And, on some level, I think SHIELD brought you on because of it. But you need to slow down.”

“But if it got me here—”

“It can still be your downfall,” Holden said. “I’ve been there. I’m just trying to make sure you don’t feed yourself to the sharks as well.”

“I understand,” Coulson said, “it’s just—I never viewed that as a negative. I just... do things.”

“It works for you now,” Holden said, “but you’re going to move up in SHIELD. Faster than you think. And our line of work, it gets to the best of us.” Coulson glanced away. “The point is, if you’re like me, you’re not gonna know it’s you because you’re not going to  _ think _ it could be you. You’re going to spin out. And I don’t want to see my mistakes repeated,” Holden finished.

“We should head back,” Coulson said.

“Yeah,” Holden said, “we should.”

They walked back through the Atrium in silence. Upon reaching the elevator, Coulson stopped short of pressing the button to ascend and glanced to Holden. “Thank you.”

“It’s...no problem,” Holden said, the words sticking in his throat. He’d wanted to go back and scream what he’d just told Coulson at his younger self for years, and saying it out loud had felt disturbingly cathartic. Upon reaching the office, he found that the case file had been delivered and left on the table.

Coulson opened it. “Only two documents,” he said, almost sounding disappointed.

“It looks like the ballistics report is stapled to the autopsy,” Holden said. He picked up the other report and furrowed his brow. “Who’re Cybertek?”

“They’re a company contracted by SHIELD,” Coulson said, not looking up from his paper. “Their name comes up on paperwork every so often. I think they’re bionics.”

“What do you mean,” Holden said, “bionics?”

“Robot limbs. Robot organs. Things like that,” Coulson said, in a matter-of-fact sort of way.

Holden rubbed his face. “Okay...this guy was their CEO’s son.”

“Shot in a Dairy Queen,” Coulson said. “It’s Kathia all over again.”

“No direct eyewitnesses,” Holden said. “Nobody saw the Winter Soldier this time.”

“Or his shiny arm,” Coulson said. “For a moment, I thought they might have manufactured it, but Cybertek hasn’t been around long enough.”

“Maybe he needs repairs,” Holden said, “or a new arm.”

“We can find out if it’s blackmail,” Coulson said. “SHIELD monitors its contractors, including their financial records. I can access those documents because I need them for my normal job.”

“If it’s a private account, it’s going to be harder,” Holden said.

“Just watch,” Coulson replied.

Coulson turned out to be right: further digging revealed that Cybertek’s CEO had purchased a house in Mexico, bought several sets of plane tickets, and was rapidly transferring funds to an external bank account.

“They’re going to kill him,” Holden said. “This isn’t what a guy who’s playing along looks like.”

“No,” Coulson agreed, “but in the margins of one of these documents—there’s details of a meeting. There’s a time, and a city—San Diego—but no exact location,” he said, and passed it over to Holden, who read it over.

“That’s tomorrow,” he said, “and—it matches the plane tickets. He’s going to go through with it.” 

“What’s bothering me is—why San Diego?” Coulson asked. “Cybertek HQ is in Palo Alto. That’s on the other side of the state.”

“It isn’t convenient,” Holden said, “but it’s close to Mexico. If that’s where he’s trying to escape to...”

“The Navy’s everywhere in San Diego,” Coulson said, “he might think it’s safer.”

“There’s, what, eight bases down there?” Holden said. “If he was meeting military officials, it wouldn’t be a bad choice.”

“Why would he be meeting military—” Coulson started, before cutting himself off. “Oh. No. That would be—”

“He could be looking for protection,” Holden said, “it doesn’t mean the U.S. Navy is sponsoring the  _ Winter Soldier.” _     


“Right,” Coulson said, “and he might not even be meeting them, anyway.”

“We don’t even know  _ where _ they’re meeting,” Holden said. “It’s a city. That’s not much to go on.”

“We should show Director Carter,” Coulson said. “Even if we can’t do anything, this is, well—SHIELD works with the Navy, sometimes.”

“I don’t want to jump to that,” Holden said, “but I agree that Peggy should be aware of this. It involves a SHIELD contractor. She’s probably dealt with this guy directly—she might have some ideas.”

Holden had Peggy’s secretary call up this time—she would meet them in the office in half an hour. Impatience still gnawed at him, but he shoved it down, opting to listen to the advice he’d given Coulson, instead. Following it earlier—years earlier—would have prevented a lot of unnecessary grief.

“Bill’s in California,” he said, thinking aloud.

“Bill?” Coulson said, who was puzzling through the documents, again.

“My old partner. You’re not gonna meet him,” Holden said, “he lives in LA. Wrong city.”

“Big move,” Coulson said, obviously more invested in the case than in small talk. Holden pursued it, anyway.

“Ever been?”

Coulson looked up. “Only time I’ve been in California at all was a mission,” he admitted. “Didn’t get to see much.”

Holden nodded. “That’s the way it works. Unless you wanna count hotels and dive bars as sightseeing.”

“Didn’t even get to do that,” Coulson said, and set the papers down. “We were in, and we were out. No hotel, no drinking.”

“Isn’t this the one,” Holden said, “the one I don’t understand, which starts with you in a coffee shop and ends with your partner in the San Francisco Bay?”

“Sausalito. And it’s a way longer story than we have time for,” Coulson said, glancing at his watch. “I’ll explain later.”

“I’ll remember to ask,” Holden said, and watched the doorway for Peggy’s entrance.


End file.
